


A Dead Man and His Lover

by robberreynard



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Blood Magic, F/M, minor gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 20:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7375567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robberreynard/pseuds/robberreynard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alistair gives his life to defeat the Archdemon, but Amell isn't going to let death take him so easily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dead Man and His Lover

**Author's Note:**

> I've been mulling over this idea for awhile, and I figured I'd crank out a short one shot so it'll stop bothering me

Flames lick at her heels from the cracks in Fort Drakon's roof. Denerim is burning below.  
She has to step around the bodies of the brave dwarves who threw themselves at the Archdemon, who bought her and her allies enough time to whittle down the lumbering dragon's strength. It must have felt as drained as she did, the way its head hung and blood poured from an open gash in its chest. It takes a step towards her and stumbles- the entire floor shakes when it hits the ground, and its muscles tremble when it attempts to get back up. It won't survive another blow. 

Annalia takes a deep breath, her fingers wrap around the hilt of a sword, stuck in the body of a fallen Hurlock. She feels half-dead herself, she can sympathize with the dragon that much. Her mana expended, every lyrium bottle she brought was downed in the fight, and her entire body is buzzing and shaky from the rush of magic coursing in her veins. She can barely unstick the blade from its sheath in the darkspawn's chest. Wynne is tending to a soldier across the field and doesn't see her about to strike the final blow. She searches out Zevran, to find him haggard and slumped against a wall for support. He sees her, and moves to go near her, but collapses to one knee. Alistair is nowhere to be seen. Her heart lurches, she wheels around, only to collide with an armored chest. His hand wraps around hers.

“Wait,” he breathes, looking no better than any of the others. Blood sticks his left eye closed, and his gold trimmed armor is in tatters. “I know you told Riordan you would do this but... you have to let me.”

“Shut up,” she wheezes, she's pretty sure a punctured lung is making it difficult to speak, “You're going to be king. Otherwise all of this is just a giant waste of my time...”

“Anora doesn't want me as a husband and you... I won't let you die, Annalia, damn the crown, damn Ferelden, damn all of it. I'll give everything up if it means you walk away from this.” The sincerity in his voice is the softest he's been with her in days. Ever since her arrangement with Anora, he'd distanced himself, maybe so it wouldn't hurt as badly. But it hurts. As she stares up into his eyes and sees the raw pain in his face, Maker, it hurts. 

“I'm not a noble, Alistair. You'd have no life with me, no future. This is all I can give you. A chance at a life, even if it's not one you envisioned.” She begins to pull her hand away from his. “You've already given enough for me.”

As she's about to turn, he grabs her by the shoulders and spins her back around, and his lips collide with hers. It's not soft, or considerate as he always tried to be. It was desperate, and he held her so tightly her arms throbbed where his fingers dug in. She feels tears slip down her face before she can stop them.  
He pulls away, leaves her breathless, aching to lean back in and kiss him again, or at least say the words on her lips. She wants so badly to tell him she loves him one last time. But when she opens her mouth to speak, he mutters something in her ear.

“You act like I'm giving you a choice.” Something collides with her stomach. It shrinks her insides, like someone just stuck their hand into her gut and pulled on her innards, the sensation causes her to gasp and double over. Like a part of her had just been ripped away. Her body quakes.

She was a good girl in the Tower. Never angered or tested the templars, all yes sir, no sir, as you say knight. She'd never had to suffer a smiting. Alistair is still a templar, much as he liked to brush that part of his life off and pretend it never happened. To turn his abilities on her... to betray the trust she'd given him, that he would never, not even in the most dire circumstances, make her suffer like the templars made her suffer... How could he? She thinks.  
The sword is wrenched from her hand, her head hits the stonework hard enough her vision fills with stars when he struggles to look up at Alistair's retreating back. The sunlight catches on his pauldrons and gleams off the sword. 

“No,” she chokes, every word a painful and laborious thing to get out of her throat, “No... no, no! Alistair! ALISTAIR!”

He doesn't even look back at her. He digs the blade through the Archdemon's leathery hide, cuts between its scales all the way down its throat. It writhes, blood bursting from its throat and out of its mouth. He drives his sword into the creature's skull. Useless as it is to even try, Annalia throws a barrier around him a moment too late. As soon as the aura surrounds him, a beam of light bursts from the dragon's body and strikes the sky, dissolving the meager spell as it formed. She pushes herself to her feet, still feeling sick, but forces her legs to move through sheer force of will. Annalia Amell's will, some joked, could overcome death itself, if she could not persuade it with her silver tongue. She was willing to face off with death if it meant Alistair would be spared. 

The shaft of energy is swirling, deceptively beautiful for what it is. She tries to reach out- what she planned to do, even she couldn't say. But the light is harsh, and a hot, blistering wind scrapes her skin, tugs at her robes. He's struggling, he's in pain and she can do nothing but watch. Watch as every muscle in his body goes taut and then, she watches the world fall away. 

She doesn't even see him die.

=X=

They want to hold a celebration in her honor, herald her as the Hero of Ferelden, when the real hero grows cold. The funeral will be afterwards, every one in Redcliffe assures her they'll attend. Anora gives a speech, but says little of the man who sacrificed himself so they could all be here. Speaks like she had any idea the type of person Alistair was. Speaks like she gave a damn. Speaks like she has to keep the smile out of her voice, smug over her victory. She was probably happy she didn't have to marry him, that she would sit her throne alone. Annalia wishes it was her on the pyre. 

She doesn't stay through the ceremony. She hugs her friends and gets comforting words from most (Sten gives only a firm squeeze on the shoulder) before making her way to where they prepare the body. It's only a body now. It lays on a stone slab, in the middle of preparation by two elves who look at her, confused why she asks to be alone with him. They oblige anyway.  
They've not yet dressed him in full armor. He's in his smallclothes, leaving his chest, legs, and arms bare. There are a few small, barely visible cuts in his forehead and cheek. A healer must have tended to him after the battle. She can't be sure, it was all such a whirlwind she doesn't remember what happened. The tower of light, then darkness, then the next thing she remembered was waking up in an infirmary days later. Only now does it occur to her that this is the first time she's seen him since Fort Drakon. She runs her fingers across his forehead, into his hair. It feels thin, and his skin is odd and waxy, damp from the wet clothes they've been washing him with. It's also freezing to the touch. There is no color in his cheeks, he doesn't open his eyes to smile at her, like he would so often when he felt her playing with his hair in his sleep. A soft patter is the only sound in the dark as a drop of rain lands on his cheek and streaks down his face. 

Annalia hastily wipes at her eyes. It does no good. Every tear she brushes away is replaced by another, until they're streaming and her body is wracked with sobs. Once more, she feels like someone is trying to scoop out her insides, and in some distant corner of her mind, she wonders if that's what a smite is supposed to feel like. As if some piece of you has been raked out. First, her connection to the Fade was temporarily severed by the templar magic, and now, she's been severed from the person she loved most in the world. But this was a sharper and more profound pain, worse than a smite, worse than the teeth of an Archdemon. A wound that would not heal as easily as either, if it ever did. 

She holds his limp body in her arms, she knows if it were not for the flowers they've inundated the room with, he would smell of decay. Instead, he smells of Andraste's Grace. She buries her fingertips into his scalp, hides her face in the crook of her neck, clings to him while tears bubble and spill over his shoulder. 

“It should have been me...You selfish bastard,” she whispers into his ashen skin, “I was ready to give my life for yours! I wasn't-” She holds him tighter. “I wasn't ready for this... I'm not ready for this, I need you. I love you. Maker, I love you so much...” 

She cries until she has nothing left. She _has_ nothing left. Not without him. Once she pulls away to look into his slack face, she's empty. Grief had succeeded its mission and torn out everything inside her, left her barren. There were no longer tears to give.  
The elf servants creep back into the room.

“Mi'lady?” one murmurs, not daring to speak too loudly, nor sound too demanding. They approach cautiously, though she pays them no mind. 

“We need to prepare for the funeral, my lady,” the other says softly. 

They would burn him. Scorch his beautiful body, erase all of his features, tear him down until he's only ash, then they would entomb him next to old heroes that have been long dead. She digs her nails into his forearm. Can she allow that? Let him become a legend, a story to tell to children, allow people to think of him as Alistair the Bold instead of the Alistair she knew? 

“Help me get him out of here.” The elf girls flinch and exchange a bewildered look. Annalia releases his arm to grab a shroud, draping it over him. She repeats, more firm the second time before one of them can get their objections out, “Help me.”

No, she decides, the servants aiding her as she cocoons him in cloth. She is not letting death have him so easily.

=X=

No one has lived in this house for months. Ever since the darkspawn rose in Denerim, many of the homes have suffered the same fate of being left behind. This was empty long before then. There are cobwebs in every corner, and the abandoned, overturned furniture has become nests for generations of spiders. A few blood stains soak the floor, she doesn't know why they're there, she doesn't care to know. Its the farthest they can get with a corpse carried between Annalia and one of the servants. The other stays behind to cover their escape.

The one that came with her looks at her like she's mad. Maybe she is. A woman who would steal her lover's body before his burial would appear to many as a mad woman. Annalia Amell is mad, but she's got nothing to lose. Some would say this was a dangerous combination. 

She balked when Morrigan offered a dark ritual the night before the attack on the Archdemon. That type of magic brought nothing but strife, she thought. If she had accepted, he would still be here. She can no longer take the moral high ground. 

“Do you want to be here for this?” she asks the mousy servant. She vigorously shakes her head.

“I-I want to go back to the castle, my lady. I never wanted any part in this.”

“Then go. Tell no one where I am.” 

She nods and bolts like a dragon is snapping at her heels. The house is devoid of any sound, the kind of quiet Annalia is not too familiar with. There were always sounds in the Tower. Templars murmuring the Chant, apprentices giggling, senior enchanters practicing spoken spells. The quiet unnerves her, but not half as much as what she has to do next. Flemeth's grimoire sits open in front of her, and just beyond that, lays Alistair. She pulls the shroud down to his chin. She wants to remind herself why she has to do this, even if it means looking death in the face. 

She has no blade; there is nothing nearby with a sharp edge, and breaking a window to use one of the glass shards would attract too much attention. Left with few options, she brings her wrist to her lips and tears open the skin with her bare teeth, biting, ripping with little regard for the pain, until the coppery taste of blood fills her mouth. Spitting out the excess, she consults the spellbook once more, just to be sure. 

The symbol to tap into the Fade is simple enough, but it takes a considerable amount of blood to draw out on the dusty wooden floors. It should have been enough time for her to come to her senses. Her movements are slow and methodical as she traces Flemeth's sketch near perfectly, and by the time she's done, the thick red substance has mingled with the dust, leaving a trail in the dirt that is slowly being absorbed by the wood. She lays the flat of her palm against the edge of the circle, without much care for the blood that continues dripping from the torn artery in her wrist. The Fade pulses in the wound. That gentle tug of the Veil being drawn away to allow a spirit to pass through. The symbol sparks like flint and steel, and a shimmer runs around the outer edges, the tingling sensation of old magic gracing her fingertips and skittering up her knuckles.  
A form rises slowly, what is at first a curled up lump in the center of the circle rising to its full height to tower above her. A human. A man in senior enchanter robes. Its difficult to make out, he's little more than wisps of black smoke, but she knows him.

She feels the imperceptible tug of a smirk on her lips. “Mouse.”

“Mage,” he chuckles in the voice she had grown used to, as opposed to the deep, menacing timbre he left her with. “I must admit, I was surprised to hear you calling. I was sure you had enough of the Fade after what happened at the Tower.”

“You know what happened?” 

“I watched it all through the Veil. I would have joined in, but it was so crowded. Not to mention, I found my favorite apprentice was long gone.” He sighs melodramatically and begins to turn. “What, pray tell, has she summoned a spirit for?”

He knows why. He looks from Alistair's body to her, and though he's little more than smoke, she swears she can see a smile playing on his face.

“Bring him back.”

“Even an apprentice must know dead is dead. If you think I have some dominion over life and death, I'm afraid you're mistaken.” He knew her intentions, he knew just what she wanted, but he had decided instead to toy with her, force the words out of her.

“Whatever the price, I'll pay it. If I have to give my life for his, if you have to take every ounce of blood from my body, if you want me to slit the throats of every mage left in Ferelden, I will do anything. _Anything_ , if you return him to me. Even if... even if it means it's not truly him.”

“Even if its a lie?”

She hangs her head. Blood has begun to pool around the floor, soaking into her robes, as her life continues to slowly trickle away, like sand slipping through her fingers. She flexes them, rubies sparkling along her palm in the low light creeping in through the window.

“A lie is better than this reality. I can live with a lie. I cannot live without him.”

He seems to consider it. Either that or he's waiting so the short beat of silence is tortuous, which it is. 

“A body to witness the mortal realm seems as good a trade as any. Very well, mage. Your desire is my command.” Alistair's words, stolen by this spirit and mimicked in his voice, cause shivers to run down Annalia's spine. Through the tiny crack in the Veil she's created, Mouse slips into the world, and vanishes from her sight. She scrambles towards the body, absently wrapping cloth around her wrist to staunch the bleeding. 

A minute passes. Her love lays on the floor, as motionless as before. She caresses his face. The stillness goes on long enough for doubt to surface. Mouse wasn't to be trusted, but would he keep his word? Had she given up her very moral fiber on the word of a demon? She finds the Maker's name on her lips, the urge to pray, yet she knows he wouldn't listen to her. Not anymore, at least.

“Andraste,” she whispers regardless, “Please, please, please, _please_. Give him back to me. If you are really so merciful, you would give mercy to your pitiful servant and give me back what you've stolen.”

Another minute ticks by. His chest rises under her hand. His eyes flutter open. She feels the world come crashing back in, emotion flooding what had been empty before, and its enough to overwhelm her before he even speaks. She rips away the shroud, embraces him, clutches him as if he'll be snatched away any second now.

“Annalia?” 

Its his voice. Its weak, and a little hoarse, but its his voice. Its him. 

Alistair is alive.

=X=

No one knows where Annalia Amell has gone. 

The women that were supposed to be tending to Alistair's funeral arrangements are too frightened to speak at first- it takes days for them to admit to even seeing her, but by then the trail is cold. The house she took one of them to is once again empty. The only thing left behind which suggests she was there at all are the patches of disturbed dust, a shroud, and a round, faded mark on the floor that looks too much like blood. 

They search for weeks with no luck. All of them call in every contact they have to find the young Warden, to no avail. She and Alistair have vanished on the wind.

Eventually, much as it pains them, and although it takes years, they give up the search. Many go their separate ways with heavy hearts at the disappearance of what many of them considered a cherished friend. They were left to wonder what became of her. Some suggested she took her life, others that she tired of being a savior.

Ten years pass, but the memory of the two Wardens remains fresh in everyone's minds. In Leliana's mind. With the long reaching arm of the Inquisition, she has resources available to her she could only dream of back in the blighted Ferelden. She starts the search anew, with no real hope of finding her old friend. Any lead they had before took them down paths to dead ends and called false alarms. 

She receives a report of a mysterious pair in the Kocari Wilds three months after she discreetly begins the mission. A woman, an apostate by all accounts, who flees at the first sign of Inquisition scouts. Details are sketchy, but some claim a man is with her. A man with sallow cheeks and dark rimmed eyes.  
Included in the dossier are two sketches of what the scouts saw. Leliana's blood turns to ice when she pulls them from the file.

The pale shadows of the Heroes of Ferelden stare up at her from the paper. A dead man and his lover.


End file.
